by Daily Digest

Economy

Scientists suggested in the new report that an alternative, more effective approach to indefinite or milder lockdowns could be alternating stricter measures with intervals of relaxed social distancing. Effective testing, contact tracing and isolation strategies, as well as efforts to shield society’s most vulnerable, would be consistently kept in place.

In its latest projections, the CBO sees GDP capsizing 38% on an annualized basis in the second quarter with the 26 million more unemployed Americans than there were at the end of 2019.

The forecasts are roughly in line with Wall Street economists and slightly less dour than the most recent tracking number from the Atlanta Federal Reserve, which sees GDP falling about 42% in the April-to-June period.

The funds, once transferred to the United Nations Development Programme, would be used to buy healthcare equipment, medicine, and food to address Venezuela’s “COVID-19 emergency,” the document seen by Reuters said.

Selling off the country’s gold reserves has become one of the Maduro administration’s few options to raise funds due to U.S. sanctions. The collapse in global oil prices and a paralyzing coronavirus quarantine has further crippled Venezuela’s moribund economy.

In normal times, American food banks are highly dependent on citizen volunteers, many of whom are retirees and thus vulnerable to the coronavirus. Now, as Covid-19 has forced Americans to stay home, volunteer manpower at food banks has dwindled at the exact time that hunger has skyrocketed. In a conversation by phone, Keffer explained how his soldiers work with food bank staff to meet the current, extraordinary surge in need.

Today it’s not the King’s courtiers who benefit, it’s who is in closest proximity to The Fed: primary dealers, investment banks, hedge funds, private equity, venture capitalists and corporate monopolists. Even in Cantillon’s day, when he enumerated the various ways new money could come into the kingdom, it was all the result of actual money entering via conquest, trade, mercantilism, or taxation. The choke point then under any scenario was the sovereign, and those in court tended to do well whenever the money supply increased.

Versions of this pledge are now being made all over the country as stay-at-home-orders are being lifted, businesses are opening, and millions of Americans now find themselves free to make millions of individual decisions about how to calibrate their sense of civic duty with their pent-up desires for the old routines and indulgences of life.

Historically, young migrants who showed up at the border without adult guardians were provided with shelter, education, medical care and a lengthy administrative process that allowed them to make a case for staying in the United States. Those who were eventually deported were sent home only after arrangements had been made to assure they had a safe place to return to.

That process appears to have been abruptly thrown out under President Trump’s latest border decrees. Some young migrants have been deported within hours of setting foot on American soil. Others have been rousted from their beds in the middle of the night in U.S. government shelters and put on planes out of the country without any notification to their families.

“I would like the White House physician to come out tomorrow and explain to me what has changed in a week and a half or two weeks for the president to take this medication when all the data that has been coming out very repetitively has shown that there’s really not a major benefit,” Alvarez said. “In most hospitals including mine, we’re not using chloroquine in the treatment of COVID patients at the present time, and we have one of the largest populations of COVID admissions in our medical center.”

“The trial is focused on our frontline and allied healthcare workers who are at an increased risk of infection due to repeated exposure caring for sick patients. Our aim is to help these people stay safe, well and able to continue in their vital roles.”

The trial will enroll 2250 participants through participating hospitals. Half of the participants will be given hydroxychloroquine, while the other half will receive a placebo tablet – both for the duration of four months.

Was the virus created in a US bio-weapons lab from where it escaped deliberately or by accident and that patient zero was in the US and that the virus was brought to China in one way or another? President Trump knows it. He also knows about the real mismanagement of the crisis in his country, the United States. But he has always been good at self-promoting propaganda and slandering perceived enemies, as long as he thinks it may help him being reelected.

Given the concentration in investment industry firms like Fidelity, BlackRock and Vanguard control over half of the market. If they choose not to buy a particular group of securities that action alone will depress these prices. When energy companies were flush with cash and had impeccable bond ratings, keeping public investors happy may not have been a top priority for their investor relations teams. But with oil prices down sharply and once proud companies struggling to pay dividends and finance capital expenditure, they might have to rely more heavily on the capital markets to raise money. If investors become skittish then cost of capital rises. The same is also true for utility companies raising large sums to modernize and decarbonize plant.

Barber hates to be the spoilsport, but there’s a lot at stake: The future of how and what we eat, as processed-food purveyors line up across the battlefield, hoping to reclaim a market they’ve been losing for years, to cash in on a quarantined populace, Barber says, whose notion of comfort involves reheating more than it does cooking.

Of course, some foods are easier to grow than others, and some plants yield more edible food than others. Still, I think this food calorie chart will help people prioritize when deciding which foods they want to grow. I’ve found it interesting to sort by fat, protein and carbs as well. Nuts have the most fat, beans have the most protein and carbs, but fruits and vegetables have the most vitamins. You should take all these things into account when planning your survival garden.

Gold & Silver

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3 Comments

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

...my gold after midnight (sing along to your favorite ABBA song).

Interesting how a "barbarous relic" still has value to a broke and broken government. Why don't they just print more bolivars and buy what they need? Perhaps there's nothing left in the foreign vault but a cardboard box and a note inside with the letters "I - O - U" printed in a trembling hand. Patience. Most of us will be millionaires in the future. Please standby. Thank you.

From two years ago (link below). Things are probably looking up by now.

CARACAS -- Elizabeth Torres is outraged, but as a Venezuelan she takes the affront in her stride. "We are a country of millionaires," she says ironically, eyeing a carton of eggs in the market. Price? Three million bolivars.

"You are a millionaire because you have to pay that much, and for that you get 36 eggs, but the minimum salary is 2.6 million! With what you get every month, you can't buy them," she says.

It's the great irony of the country's cruel decline. Sitting atop the world's largest reserves of crude, Venezuela -- once Latin America's richest country -- is now a state of millionaires, but the millions are in bolivars and practically worthless.

According to the country's leading universities, 87 percent of the population is now officially poor.

Little Talked About But Important Topic

In normal times, American food banks are highly dependent on citizen volunteers, many of whom are retirees and thus vulnerable to the coronavirus. Now, as Covid-19 has forced Americans to stay home, volunteer manpower at food banks has dwindled at the exact time that hunger has skyrocketed. In a conversation by phone, Keffer explained how his soldiers work with food bank staff to meet the current, extraordinary surge in need.